I am so thrilled to post two covers for KILLING FEAR. These are not officially released, but they’re not going to change except for the tag line, which will become “Fight for your next breath” . . . if we have a tag line at all. But the final covers won’t be printed until December anyway.

Ballantine decided to produce two covers, a blue one and a red one. If all goes according to plan, both will be available in stores, side-by-side. I have a favorite, but I like them both. I’d be interested in your opinions as well–blue or red? I’m particularly interested to find out if men and women have different thoughts, or if those who read primarily romance prefer one over those who read primarily suspense.

I really love these covers. It’s amazing, because there was one early cover that I didn’t love so much. They only made one change, but it was the backdrop, and it changed the entire tone and feeling of the cover . . . for the better, IMO. In print they look sharper and bolder than they do on screen, and my name is in silver just like my other books.

Yes, I’m gushing. Sorry 🙂 . . .

We’ve talked about covers a lot here. Covers are so important to book sales that it’s worth talking about. Unless your name is Nora Roberts or Stephen King or James Patterson and a handful of others, covers drive people to pick up your book. Back cover copy pushes them to open it. And your writing pushes them to buy it.

But picking up the book is largely dependent on the cover. For me, the most important thing about the cover is that it conveys the tone of the book. Light or dark, fun or serious, “romantic” romantic suspense or “suspensy” romantic suspense. I don’t like being deceived and expecting one thing, but getting another.

Have you bought a book just because you loved its cover, or turned away a book because you hated the front?

You could probably do a random poll anywhere in the U.S.—NewYork, Los Angeles, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana—and ask folks what they thought about the condition of our society, and I’d bet dollars to lug-nuts most would probably give you the same answer. Each with it’s own little twist of course. Down here, the majority would probably answer, “People today, dey crazy. Nobody makes no sense no more. Everybody t’inks dey got all de answers, but de answers dey got is all back’ards.”

I have a tendency to agree with them, but then again, I’ve been known to be a bit opinionated about certain things from time to time.

Take the post Jen put up on Monday about the McCann family and how the parents are now, now, suspects in the case. That’s an ongoing situation that drives me bonkers, and I keep hoping it doesn’t turn into another JonBenet case…

As if the McCann case wasn’t enough, we now have the woman who murdered her minister husband with a shotgun appearing on Oprah, and a woman from Cincinnati, Brenda Nesselroad, who was set free after killing her two-year-old daughter. She forgot the child was in the car when she arrived at work and left her in the vehicle for eight hours. Authorities estimated that the ambient temperature in the vehicle was close to one hundred twenty degrees. Granted, though, the mother forgot her child, but she didn’t forget the boxes of donuts she’d bought for an office meeting that morning. (And the woman’s an assistant principal at a middle school?!)

How did she get away with it? By her attorney niggling the ‘letter’ of the law. Check this out….

Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea.

It means “the act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty.” There are different mens rea (i.e. mental states) and culpability is based on whether the offending party possessed the mental state that comports with a particular crime. In the Nesselroad case, the necessary mental state is recklessness, and to prove that, you need to show that the offending party perversely disregarded a known risk. That is different than forgetting something. The prosecutor explained it this way:

“Here’s my challenge to anyone who thinks she should have been charged: Do you believe she left her child in there on purpose? That’s what I have to believe as prosecutor to charge her. That’s what the law is.”

The law he’s referring to is child endangering, which in Ohio requires a parent or guardian to act recklessly by disregarding a substantial risk.
To many, there is little doubt the mother was reckless. But the legal definition of reckless requires proof the mother perversely disregarded a known risk.

The prosecutor continues his reasoning by saying, “When people hear the word reckless, they say, ‘Well, certainly this person was reckless, but the legal definition of reckless is way, way higher than the definition we use every day.”

The county prosecutor decided the evidence supported Nesselroad’s claim she forgot her child was in the car. Once he made that decision, criminal charges were out of the question. He claimed if the mother forgot, she could not have disregarded a risk because she didn’t know the child was there.

So this woman walks into a palm reader’s place and asks for a reading. The palm reader looks at the palm and says, “I can’t see your lifeline.”

“What do you mean? I just paid you ten bucks to read my palm.”

The palm reader shrugs. “Look for yourself.”

The woman looks at her palm and sees that the palm reader’s right—her palm is smooth and unlined.

“What did you think about on the way here?” the palm reader asks.

“I decided to stay with my job, even though it sucks,” the woman says. “And even though my husband is cheating on me, I’m gonna stay with him no matter what. It’s better than being alone.”

“You’ve made a lot of decisions in a short period of time,” the palm reader says. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

The woman opens her mouth to reply. Of course it’s what she wants to do. She’s thought about it for weeks, and finally came up with her plan. In her mind, it’s set in concrete.

“Tell you what,” the palm reader says. “Go home and write it all up, everything you decided, put it away overnight, and read it in the morning.”

“Why should I do that?” the woman asks.

“Because then you can see it in black and white.”

The woman writes pages and pages about what she’s decided to do. She puts it away until the next morning. Sipping her coffee, she tackles the pages she printed up last night. She gets through three paragraphs and says, “This is crap”.

And so she rethinks the whole thing. She does the math, changes the equation, looks at the problems in her life from a completely different angle. Suddenly, it falls into place like the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She goes back to the palm reader to thank her, shows her the lifeline on her palm. “Look at this! It’s a miracle!”

The palm reader says, “It was there all along. But now you can see it.”

I had my new thriller figured out except for the details. I don’t like to plot too far into the future, so I figured the details would work themselves out as they always did. I had my main character and the central conflict and the premise and some good scenes at the beginning, so I wrote. I wrote quite a bit, too. At a certain point I stopped to figure out what came next in the story. It would be easy stuff to figure out—or so I thought. When it came to that point, all of a sudden I couldn’t make the simplest decision. None of it worked together, no matter how hard I tried. But I was writing good stuff, wasn’t I? Why couldn’t I make my mind up on relatively simple plot points?

I decided it was time to print up everything I had and read it straight through. I promised myself I would be honest. The prologue was great; I’d read it a hundred times. The first chapter started out nicely. And then it all fell apart. I realized very quickly that I couldn’t force myself to read more than ten of the seventy pages I’d written. In an instant, I knew why: The main character couldn’t sustain the story. Every action she took pushed her into deficit mode. She was ineffectual, helpless, hapless, way too young for the part, and had no tools to deal with the challenges demanded by the story. And every chance I got, I instinctively marginalized her role, making her increasingly insignificant.

So I changed the character. Changed her relationships, changed who she was. I turned a number of circumstances on their heads; an inexperienced deputy of 27 with no official sanction to work cases suddenly became a homicide cop of 34 with familial ties to the potential suspect.

The stubborn plot pieces that wouldn’t fit suddenly flew together in a new way. New ideas cropped up and fit together with older ideas. The story evolved and became whole before my eyes. Fortunately for me, the secondary character had all the excitement the main character did not, and his story was interesting. I was able to keep his part of the book intact, since the two of them had not yet met.

I don’t know what made me stop, print up and reread what I’d written to that point. Certainly I had gone over most of those scenes many times on the computer, and I’d even printed up many of the same pages before. But when I saw the work in its entirety, I knew immediately what was wrong.

This is one of those elusive tricks of writing that goes beyond understanding. Even for those writers who don’t want to see beyond their headlights on a dark road, a part of them is working up ahead, making sure the path is clear. When obstacle after obstacle is thrown into your path, when you can’t see into the future at all, when seemingly easy plot complications are impossible to solve, your mind is trying to tell you something.

I take comfort in the fact that my subconscious is always by my side, riding shotgun.

Really? The only thing I found shocking was that the police to that long to look at the parents. The story never really made sense to me. Yes, children ARE kidnapped out of their beds. It does happen, but just not usually while the parents are supposedly one hundred yards away eating dinner and occasionally checking on the kids.

The story didn’t add up to me. Maybe the parents aren’t involved, I really don’t know. Weird, tragic things do happen, and as parents, we sometimes make very poor judgment calls.

But this case bugged me. A lot. The first I heard of it was when JK Rowlings and David Beckham made public appeals to help the family raise money to find their daughter. I immediately wondered why? Why are the stars coming out to find THIS child?

Then I saw the picture of the child, a beautiful blue-eye blonde, and pictures of the grieving successful, attractive parents. Maybe the parents were quick thinking and media savvy enough to figure out how to get Madeline in the news where she had the best chance of being found. And who doesn’t want to help find an abducted child?

Right from the first time I heard this story, I had a bad feeling. A feeling that people, people that are probably good, caring people who wanted to find this child and bring her safely home, were being duped.

And I’m just going to say it–the media went for showing the picture of the beautiful, blonde blue-eyed girl tragically missing. They seem to believe that “look” will play on more emotions that all those other missing children out there. I hope to God that’s not true, but I fear it is.

Here’s what I think happened—when the police got the call of a missing child, no one wanted to believe that these nice looking doctors could lose it and hurt their own child, or accidently harm their child the cover it up. It’s much easier to believe an intruder got into the room and took the child. Someone who looks like a monster—maybe a known child predator.

But it can’t be the two nice looking, successful parents. That hits too close to home for all of us. We just want to believe we can spot a monster. We don’t want to believe that the very people who are supposed to protect a child with their lives could be the ones to take that child’s life.

I don’t know what happened to Madeline McCann. I hope they will find her alive and well, but the reality is probably much grimmer than that. If the parents did have something to do with it, the police botched the investigation. Interrogating them FOUR MONTHS LATER is too late. They’ve had time to cement their stories, and maybe even believe it themselves. If the parents had nothing to do with Madeline’s disappearance, then all this is now a horrible, painful torture for two grieving people. Something that should have been done right away and gotten over with. In the first hours of their daughter’s disappearance, I’m sure they would have done anythng to help find her including asnwer any and all questions (assuming they had nothing to do with it). The best chance that child had was in the first hours of discovering her missing and no stone should have been left unturned.

But a huge massive bolder was—the parents.

No I’m not surprised they’ve been named as suspects. I’m just surprised it took so long. What do you all think?

Special Notice–Tomorrow Murder She Writes will welcome J. Carson Black as our Guest Blogger. Natalie is taking a little time off but she’ll be back very soon!

My knees are so not having any of that! But, I have hope, that once there is less cargo in the caboose the knees will not be so tender. I have to begin somewhere and have begun this journey with a first step. Oh, and there is a reward at the end of the journey.

The obvious aside, being healthier and looking much better in my clothes, I have picked a prize. When I have officially lost that thirtieth pound I will order a pair of red snake skin Manolo pumps I have coveted for some time now. I almost ordered them the other night on a pure impulse, but I told myself that was cheating.
So, I go visit them a couple of times a day online.

Okay, so my youngest daughter calls me the other day. “Mom, I met this couple at work and they sell this diet drink…” I told her to stop right there. Then proceeded to tell her what we all know. While it may seem to pile on quick, the only way to get rid of fat is through a steady healthy diet and exercise. Period. Yes, there are fad diets that work, and diet pills, and diet drinks and this program and that program, but until there is serious and prolonged (as in forever) lifestyle changes the weight will come back, and usually it brings friends.

And here’s the other thing. It takes a lot longer to lose then it does to gain. So patience is vital.
Another vital part of weight lose is eating habits. Grazing works. Eat a little something every 3 hours. Be sure to eat breakfast. It sets your metabolism for the day. I hate breakfast, unless I eat it 3 hours after I get up. But I make a quick frittata casserole to last me the week. I cut a chunk each morning nuke it and munch it like a candy bar as I read my morning email and drink my coffee. Here’s my recipe.

I whisk the four eggs in a large bowl then add the egg beaters, mix that all up, add the salsa and cheese, pour into a Pam’ed casserole dish, put it in the oven at 350 for about 25 min or so.

Cover with foil and fridg until you want a chunk. You can use spinach, onions, mushrooms or any type of veggie you want, just make sure you eat a chunk in the morning. If you’re going to have carbs, breakfast is the time to eat them. Try to keep it restricted to whole grain products.

If you can’t afford a gym, don’t like gyms or don’t have the time for a gym, pick the same time of day, and walk for 20 min. Add time as you can. Do it every day. Regular exercising combined with less calories will equal weight loss. Maybe not 5 pounds a week like on those fad diets but the slow and steady approach makes it much easier.

Don’t bring crap in the house. And pre make snacks. Cut and store fresh veggies, buy lean protein and while that non fat mayo is disgusting, buy the low fat and mix it with a dollop of the good stuff. Or better yet, use mustard instead of mayo. I L.O.V.E. mayonnaise. To avoid it, I don’t eat foods that require it.

If you like tuna make a bowl of tuna with chopped white onion, chopped jalapeÃ±os and some cilantro. Mix with a little bit of mayo and it’s delish. Keep a bowl in the fridg for those cravings. Always make sure there is something healthy to munch on. You know what triggers your carvings, stop pulling the trigger. Go walk instead. Force yourself. I guarantee you will be glad you did once you are out there.

So, when I weighed in this Friday morning, I weighed 3 pounds less then I did the previous Friday (but I started the previous Monday, so 3 lbs in 10 days).

Featured on murder she writes

Bio:

Allison Brennan

Allison Brennan is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nearly three dozen romantic thrillers and mysteries, including the Lucy Kincaid series and the Max Revere series. She lives in Northern California with her husband, five children, and assorted pets.